International Civil Aviation Organization
The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), pronounced /aɪˈkeɪoʊ/, (in French: Organisation de l'aviation civile internationale, OACI), is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation and fosters the planning and development of international air transport to ensure safe and orderly growth. Its headquarters are located in the Quartier International of Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The ICAO Council adopts standards and recommended practices concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation. In addition, the ICAO defines the protocols for air accident investigation followed by transport safety authorities in countries signatory to the Convention on International Civil Aviation, commonly known as the Chicago Convention. The ICAO should not be confused with the International Air Transport Association (IATA), a trade organization for airlines also headquartered in Montreal, or with the Civil Air Navigation Services Organisation (CANSO), an organization for Air Navigation Service Providers (ANSPs) with its headquarters at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol in the Netherlands. History The forerunner to the ICAO was the International Commission for Air Navigation (ICAN). It held its first convention in 1903 in Berlin, Germany but no agreements were reached amongst the eight countries that attended. At the second convention in 1906, also held in Berlin, 27 countries attended. The third convention, held in London, United Kingdom in 1912 allocated the first radio callsigns for use by aircraft. The ICAN existed until 1945, when the Provisional International Civil Aviation Organization (PICAO) was established. The PICAO became the ICAO in 1947. Statute The 9th edition of the Convention on International Civil Aviation includes modifications from 1948 up to year 2006. The ICAO refers to its current edition of the Convention as the statute, and designates it as ICAO Doc 7300/9. The Convention has 18 Annexes. These Annexes are listed by title in the article Convention on International Civil Aviation. Membership ICAO members are 191 of the United Nations members and the Cook Islands. The non-member states are Dominica, Liechtenstein, Niue, Tuvalu, Vatican City and the states with limited recognition. http://www.sudantribune.com/South-Sudan-becomes-191st-member,40710 Standards The ICAO also standardizes certain functions for use in the airline industry, such as the Aeronautical Message Handling System AMHS; this probably makes it a standards organization. The ICAO defines an International Standard Atmosphere (also known as ICAO Standard Atmosphere), a model of the standard variation of pressure, temperature, density, and viscosity with altitude in the Earth's atmosphere. This is useful in calibrating instruments and designing aircraft.ICAO, Manual of the ICAO Standard Atmosphere (extended to 80 kilometres (262 500 feet)), Doc 7488-CD, Third Edition, 1993, ISBN 92-9194-004-6 The ICAO standardizes machine-readable passports worldwide. This website aggregates a number of ICAO documents and conference announcements related to MRTDs. Such passports have an area where some of the information otherwise written in textual form is written as strings of alphanumeric characters, printed in a manner suitable for optical character recognition. This enables border controllers and other law enforcement agents to process such passports quickly, without having to input the information manually into a computer. ICAO publishes Doc 9303, Machine Readable Travel Documents, the technical standard for machine-readable passports. A more recent standard is for biometric passports. These contain biometrics to authenticate the identity of travellers. The passport's critical information is stored on a tiny RFID computer chip, much like information stored on smartcards. Like some smartcards, the passport book design calls for an embedded contactless chip that is able to hold digital signature data to ensure the integrity of the passport and the biometric data. Communication, Navigation, Surveillance / Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) systems are communications, navigation, and surveillance systems, employing digital technologies, including satellite systems together with various levels of automation, applied in support of a seamless global air traffic management system. Registered codes Both ICAO and IATA have their own airport and airline code systems. ICAO uses 4-letter airport codes (vs. IATA's 3-letter codes). The ICAO code is based on the region and country of the airport—for example, Charles de Gaulle Airport has an ICAO code of LFPG, where L''' indicates Southern Europe, '''F, France, PG, Paris de Gaulle, while Orly Airport has the code LFPO (the 3rd letter sometimes refers to the particular flight information region (FIR) or the last two may be arbitrary). In the most of the world, the ICAO and IATA codes are unrelated—for example, Charles de Gaulle Airport has an IATA code of CDG and Orly, ORY. However, the location prefix for continental United States is K''' and the ICAO codes are usually the IATA code with this prefix—for example, the ICAO code for LAX is KLAX. Canada follows a similar pattern, where a prefix of '''C is usually added to an IATA code to create the ICAO code—for example, Edmonton is YEG or CYEG. (In contrast, airports in Hawai'i are in the Pacific region and so have ICAO codes that start with PH—for example, PHKO for Kona.) Note that not all airports are assigned codes in both systems—for example, airports that do not have airline service may not need an IATA code. ICAO also assigns 3-letter airline codes (vs. the more-familiar 2-letter IATA codes—for example, UAL vs. UA for United Airlines). ICAO also provides telephony designators to aircraft operators worldwide, a one- or two-word designator used on the radio, usually, but not always, similar to the aircraft operator name. For example, the identifier for Japan Airlines International is JAL and the designator is Japan Air, but Aer Lingus is EIN and Shamrock . Thus, a Japan Airlines flight numbered 111 would be written as "JAL111" and pronounced "Japan Air One One One" on the radio, while a similarly numbered Aer Lingus would be written as "EIN111" and pronounced "Shamrock One One One". ICAO maintains the standards for aircraft registration ("tail numbers"), including the alphanumeric codes that identify the country of registration. For example, airplanes registered in the United States have tail numbers starting with N'''. ICAO is also responsible for issuing alphanumeric aircraft type codes that contain 2–4 characters. These codes provide the identification that is typically used in flight plans. An example of this is the Boeing 747 that would use (depending on the variant) '''B741, B742, B743, etc. Regions and regional offices flying from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, via N'Djamena in Chad, to Paris CDG airport in France. An explosion midflight over the Sahara Desert in Niger caused the aircraft to breakup, killing all 156 passengers and 15 crew, including the U.S. Ambassador to Chad, Robert Pugh. The investigators found that a bomb placed in the cargo hold by Chadian rebels backed by Libya was responsible for the explosion; in 1999 a French court convicted six Libyans including the former Libyan intelligence chief, Abdullah Senussi, in absentia, of planning and implementing the attack.UTA Flight 772: Aviation Safety Network report References External links * International Civil Aviation Organization website * Convention on International Civil Aviation (Doc 7300) * ICAO airport codes worldwide, by country * ICAO aircraft manufacturer codes * ICAO brief memo Category:Civil aviation authorities Category:Organizations based in Montreal Category:International air transport Category:International Civil Aviation Organization Category:United Nations specialized agencies Category:Civil aviation authorities Category:Organizations based in Montreal Category:International air transport Category:International Civil Aviation Organization Category:United Nations specialized agencies Category:Civil aviation authorities Category:Organizations based in Montreal Category:International air transport Category:International Civil Aviation Organization Category:United Nations specialized agencies Category:Civil aviation authorities Category:Organizations based in Montreal Category:International air transport Category:International Civil Aviation Organization Category:United Nations specialized agencies